Preparation of Nanoscale Au Islands in Patterned Arrays

A facile method is presented for generating quasihexagonal two-dimensional arrays of nanoscale gold islands. The topological contrast intrinsic to Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer films of surface micelles, self-assembled from an amphiphilic diblock copolymer, was used as a stencil mask. Argon ion milling of gold-coated silicon and mica substrates, which had been covered with these ultrathin masks, resulted in arrays of ~25-nm diameter gold islands supported on patterned silicon pillars or gold islands directly adhered to a mica substrate. The resulting arrays were characterized by atomic force microscopy and field emission gun scanning electron microscopy.